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No matter how I turn the system off OS wise the laptop restarts in 5 secounds every time even from safe mode shutdown.Now if I wait till the leds all go out and the screen goes blank and use the Power Button on the laptop and hold it down till I hear the power Click(relay I assume}the laptop will stay off till I Power up with the switch again.I've run every virus checker and Spyware program I could find.I've removed the battery and even pulled the CPU and repacked with silver heatsink comp.and cleaned vents.I've swaped the power supply and even the ram.This has been a real stinker for about 2 months now could use some ideas here please.I even reinstalled Windows XP!

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by techsheaven

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Useful, practical next steps for this symptom (Bad_Pool_Caller 0xC2 on shutdown) after the troubleshooting already reported by and the suggestions from .

Bad_Pool_Caller means a kernel-mode component (usually a driver or filter) corrupted or freed memory it shouldn’t. With a clean XP/SP3 install and no Device Manager flags, focus on identifying the offending driver and isolating hardware versus OS/driver causes.

  1. Capture and inspect crash dumps — configure Windows to write small memory dumps, reproduce the crash, then check the dump folder (C:\Windows\Minidump). A tool such as a simple minidump viewer or WinDbg will usually show the .sys filename responsible; that exact filename is the most useful clue (search the file name to find which vendor/driver it belongs to). Do not guess — remove or update the identified driver first.

  2. Use Driver Verifier to force a failing driver to reveal itself. Run verifier, choose standard settings and target third‑party drivers (start with video, network and any AV/filter drivers). Reboot; if Verifier triggers a BSOD it will point to the guilty driver. To turn Verifier off (if the system becomes unbootable) run verifier /reset from Safe Mode.

  3. Hardware/BIOS isolation — boot the machine from a Live Linux USB/CD and try a shutdown. If Linux also restarts, it’s almost certainly a BIOS/hardware problem (power board, stuck/shorted power switch, RTC alarms, wake-on-LAN/USB). If Linux stays off, the issue is driver/Windows. Check BIOS power settings (disable Wake‑on‑LAN/USB/RTC), remove internal cards/peripherals, and try with AC only, battery only, and with neither to see differences.

If dumps point to an OEM driver, try HP’s chipset/ACPI and video updates or roll back the driver. If hardware behavior persists after BIOS/firmware updates and the Linux test fails, suspect the motherboard/power circuitry and consider service.

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Member Avatar for techsheaven

try this:

Member Avatar for Smoke"UM

No luck but thanks for the try.Sorry for the late response have been very busy at work playing catch up.

Member Avatar for techsheaven

Do this:

Right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
On the Advanced tab, click Settings under Startup and Recovery.
Clear the Automatically restart check box under System failure, and then click OK.

Click Start > Run
In the text box type the following and then press ENTER: cmd
In the command prompt type the following and then press ENTER: shutdown -s -t 01

You should get a blue screen with a stop error. Please post it here.

Good Luck

Member Avatar for Smoke"UM

Bad_Pool_Caller
Stop 0X000000c2
If you need the entire stop I'll photo paste it here and thanks again.

Member Avatar for techsheaven

Sorry about the delay...

Are you using FAT32 or NTFS?

To find out, go to My Computer, right-click your system drive (usually "c:") and select Proterties. Look at the file system.

Edited by techsheaven because: n/a
Member Avatar for Smoke"UM

NTFS

Member Avatar for techsheaven

This problem can happen when xp is installed as an upgrade. I see you have done a clean install.

Edited by techsheaven because: Question was not needed
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Do you have service-pack 3?

Member Avatar for Smoke"UM

yep sp3

Member Avatar for techsheaven

certain system errors can initiate a restart. since your error is happening at shutdown. it restarts instead.

please do the following:
hold the windows key and press r
in the run window, type: devmgmt.msc
from the view menu, select Show Hidden Devices
are there any yellow exclamation marks? If so what are they?

Member Avatar for Smoke"UM

no yellow warnings marks

Member Avatar for techsheaven

Did this problem occur from the time you did a clean install of xp, or later? You did do a clean install -- not a repair, right?

Member Avatar for Smoke"UM

I did a clean install because of this problem but it did not help.5 secounds after the laptop blue power light goes out it comes back on and reboots but if i use the power button to shut it down as soon as i see the blue light come back on and hold it down for a few secounds till it goes out again all is well the laptop stays powered down.Everything seems to be working great on it except for the reboot pain lol.

Member Avatar for techsheaven

This is taking some time, I know. I am sure we will get to the bottom of it. When you hold the power button it circumvents the operating system. The problem with that is that any data in your disk cache waiting to be written will be lost and your system could ... eventually will, become corrupt (assuming you disk has a cache and it is enabled). So this is important to get fixed... not just annoying. I will keep looking into the problem and we can try one step at a time untill it is resolved.

Member Avatar for techsheaven

I've been studying this issue for several hours and it seem I still don't have enough information. Would you please do the following:

Post the entire message.

Run the MS memory diagnostic tool from
(Run the extended test by pressing T while Windows Memory Diagnostic is running.
Let it run overnight, and post results -- any failures?)

If the RAM checks out ok, I suspect a driver is trying to free memory that is already free. The most likely thing would be your video driver, though it could be any. Did you install XP with a Original Equipment Manufacturer's CD/DVD or a retail version?

Sorry this is turning into a long process.

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